FROM THE ARCHIVES: Maintenance as a profit center

Implementing a Lean system requires leadership and patience

Jack Smith, BIT Writing and Editing Services

05/14/2012

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One of the most important issues facing manufacturers is the need to pay greater attention to maintenance. David Cline, vice president of operations, Central Region, for Harland Clarke, Dallas, TX, kicked off the 2011 Manufacturing/Automation Summit sessions with his presentation, “Maintenance as a Profit Center.”

Although Cline discussed maintenance improvement significantly throughout the presentation, the story of how his company made its Lean Manufacturing journey was his primary focus. However, he emphasized the strong relationships between proactive maintenance and Lean Manufacturing. He said that maintenance is part of the cross-functional team structure, and when everyone works toward the same goal, the entire organization benefits and profits.

Cline explained the history of how the John H. Harland Company and Clarke American merged to form the Harland Clarke Holdings Corp., which is divided into three divisions: Harland Clarke Payments, Harland Financial Solutions, and Scantron. The parent company is M+F Worldwide Corp.

Another acquisition that Harland made was Liberty, another check printer that specializes in credit unions. This acquisition triggered what Cline called the company’s “Burning Platform.” “We wanted to integrate them into the manufacturing facilities of Harland,” said Cline. “We didn’t have the necessary equipment to do that. We were short of capacity. Or we thought we were short of capacity.”

The CEO rejected the request for capital to invest in additional equipment. The CEO’s admonition was for the managers to figure out how to do a better job with what they had.

Sometimes it takes roadblocks to convince organizations to finally make a change. “That really put our backs against the wall,” Cline said. “But it was probably the best thing. It really was our opportunity to look at what was going on. We realized that we weren’t going to be able to purchase the equipment, so we had to move on.”

Harland had already started partnering with a consulting organization to help it on its journey toward Lean and Six Sigma. The organization advised Harland that it had a Lean problem and that addressing it would solve the equipment capacity issue.

Harland’s Lean journey had three phases. “After the training, we formed a project team and started a company-wide initiative to solve the equipment capacity problem,” said Cline. “It became evident that we needed to work on 5s. And if any of you have implemented 5s, you know it’s about a lot more than just cleaning.”

At first, many of the leaders were skeptical, saying, “How will cleaning help us solve this capacity problem?” Cline said that implementing 5s is a bit more complicated than just saying you will do it. “We had to execute 53 different kaizen events to finish the project across the organization. It was pretty extensive and took time to get this done,” he said.

Benefits emerge

Although the company was just starting on its Lean journey, it was beginning to see benefits. “The results we were starting to see and execute were unbelievable,” said Cline. “We had about 3% gap in equipment capacity. We weren’t using it effectively. But we gained 4.5% in this specific area. We solved that bottleneck. Leadership loved the results. We couldn’t get enough of Lean. We were ready to go forward with our Lean journey.”

Cline explained that it was maintenance that started doing the 5s. The maintenance team realized that having tools and resources where they need them, when they need them helps them to reduce downtime. “They were buying into the process and giving us examples of how this was actually working for us,” said Cline.

“The best way to create change is to engage the people with whom you’re trying to create change,” Cline added. “If you do it for them, they’ll fight you along the way and you’ll never sustain the results. It’s a leadership issue.”

Harland continued its Phase 1 with 5s and total productive maintenance (TPM). Part of the company’s TPM efforts was to restore its equipment to as close to new condition as possible. “Maintenance was right there with the leaders and operators,” Cline said. “We were doing this together. That really did help us become a much better team along the way.”

Phase 2 was the second corporate project that Harland executed across its manufacturing facilities. Cline identified six elements that characterized this effort:

Leader education

Value stream mapping

Standard work

Visual management (make it visual)

Water spider/kanban system

Autonomous maintenance.

It became obvious that Harland needed to reduce work in process (WIP) between process steps. “We realized that all that WIP had become the barrier blinding us from realizing that our equipment was not running as well as it needed to run,” Cline said. “As we reduced the WIP, we needed to actually count on the equipment running when it was supposed to run. We needed to understand that it wasn’t a maintenance problem, it was a leadership problem.”

Harland’s ultimate goal was adopting the Lean cell concept. This became the company’s Phase 3. Cline identified five elements associated with this phase:

More extensive value stream mapping

Machine balance

People balance

Engineering

Mock-up.

Gaining benefits

Throughout its Lean journey Harland Clarke achieved some amazing results. “We knew we wanted to work on cycle time,” Cline said. “We reduced our cycle time through the cell by 64%. As we implemented the cells along the way, we became much more predictable in getting consistent cycle time through all the elements in working with our people and solving problems and working with maintenance.”

Other results include:

Reducing production footprint by 44%

Reducing WIP by 61%

Improving plant capacity by 108%

Reducing conveyor length by 93%

Reducing order travel distance by 80%

Improving machine OEE by 31%

Increasing units per hour by 23%.

“Equipment reliability drives the success of cells,” said Cline. “But you have to create a different system. You can’t just tell maintenance to do a better job. You have to change the system to capture more kaizen opportunities.

“In trying to create a system for becoming a better team, we also empowered our employees. You have to empower people. You have to create a system where people feel empowered.

“We got some great results,” Cline concluded. “We’re still learning as we go, and we know we can do much better, especially as we continue to focus on our equipment reliability.”

Talking points

Beyond the metrics and the management of maintenance come some basics that help the process grow and improve. Six key points to the successful implementation of a Lean maintenance process are:

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